Posted on 01/21/2003 3:55:14 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Twice a month I have to bundle my newspapers and take boxes with glass and plastic items down to the curb to be removed and, one assumes, recycled. This does not include the two other pickups for what is presumably just plain old garbage. I am old enough to remember when a person just threw all of this stuff into the garbage can to be taken away. It involved two less trips and a smaller bill from the "waste management" company.
Ask yourself about the utility of recycling. Glass is made from sand. The Earth is not running out of sand. Newspapers, when buried, stay intact for decades and, when burned, become mere ashes. Recycling plastic requires as much or more energy than to produce it. Its uses, however, are extraordinary, contributing to a healthier lifestyle for everyone. So, why recycle?
In 1998, it cost Americans $36 billion to get rid of 210 million tons of municipal waste. It probably costs more today. Part of that multi-billion cost is the additional element of recycling requirements. It´s not like you have a choice. New York City publishes a brochure on recycling that says bluntly "It´s the law."
There is no question that Americans produce a lot of garbage. In the past we buried or burned it, but that was before the environmentalists, Greens, began a campaign that would have us believe there was no room left for landfills, that landfills were inherently a "hazard", and that incinerators were no better because of what came out of the smokestack. All of a sudden, it became very costly to get rid of the garbage where, before, it was no big deal.
The result of the Green lies about garbage was the closing of thousands of landfills around the nation and the increased difficulty of opening new ones. One effort in New Jersey to build a new incinerator ended up a financial nightmare for investors when the courts ruled that haulers could not be compelled by law to bring the garbage to the incinerator, especially if it was cheaper to dump it somewhere else.
The problem is not that we have more garbage. The problem is we have fewer places to bury and burn it. For that you can thank the Greens. This is something to think about every time you separate your glass and plastic or bundle your newspapers, You may feel you are doing something noble for the environment, but you are paying more for that privilege and the odds are the stuff is being buried and burned just the same. The market for anything recycled often proves unprofitable because the cost of recycling does not justify itself.
One scholar, A. Clark Wiseman of Spokane´s Gonzaga University, calculated that, at the current rate of solid waste generation, the nation´s entire solid waste for the next 1,000 years could be buried in a single landfill 100 yards high and 35 miles square. We are not running out of land for landfills. We have run into the lie that they are unsafe. The truth is that landfills have been routinely converted into valuable property once filled. In California there are a number of golf courses that were former landfills. In New Jersey, there are malls and corporate campuses.
In July of last year, New York City suspended the collection of plastic and beverage cartons for a year and the collection of glass for two years. Said the Mayor, "This temporary suspension will save the City an estimated $40 million." Now do the math. If New York can save $40 million by not requiring recycling, imagine the billions that could be saved by cities and suburbs coast to coast? You could renovate every school in America with those funds.
In the end, if recycling was cost-efficient why is it necessary to pass laws to force people to separate and bundle stuff that could just as easily be tossed out with the rest of the garbage? That´s how environmentalism works. It creates a Big Lie and then sets about getting laws passed to mandate it. Years later, states, cities, communities, and just ordinary people begin to ask, "Why are we doing this?" and the answer is, "It´s the law."
It wasn´t always the law. There was a time when landfills were understood to be a perfectly sensible way to get rid of the garbage. Incinerators, too. But that was before the Greens decided recycling was a dandy way to make everyone think that throwing out the garbage was yet another "hazard", "danger", and "threat" to Mother Earth. To which I say, "That´s just garbage!"
No, but we share a few opinions on things
When I first signed up I was using the laptop in the garage & working on my '68 Fairlane, so it seemed like the thing to do at the time.
I wanted to stay anonymous as I have been known to criticize our local republican party leaders
Arrgh.....that's the whole point. Landfills DON'T trash the environment....there's a difference between a landfill and an industrial waste site, but people lump them together.
There never were "endless landfills" and even if all recyling ended forever today there NEVER would be endless landfills.
What recyling has become (particularly because of the endless harping on it in schools) is a pseudo-enviro-religious ritual or penance that makes people feel good but is environmentally irrelevant.
Big sigh.
LVM
The only people the landfill goons require to separate the recyclables are the small garbage haulers. The big guys, like Waste Management and BFI, just dump all the stuff in the same hole. That is why all the little guys are quickly going out of business. Very shortly we will only have BFI and WM.
Nope, I suspect you're not looking at WHO it is costing.
It's profitable FOR THE PAPER COMPANY because they're making more money from selling what they recycle the paper into than they're paying for the old paper coming in.
The problem is, the municipalities collecting the garbage paper to recycle are likely spending more money collecting it and sorting it than they're taking in from selling it to the paper company. This is where the money is lost and how NYC can save that much $$$ from stopping recycling.
Our mayor admitted to me that the only reason for separating the recyclables (because everything goes into the same hole) is that someday when someone figures out how to use this stuff, they can "mine" the mountains of plastic, glass, paper, etc.
I burn, but a couple of houses either way they can't.
Same here, and it's been going on for years. All the 'recycling' we do is for nothing.
Our small city had its own recycling center which was enthusiastically used by all. The city eventually closed it because it was costing a fortune to operate and required a couple of full time people to manage. Now the local garbage haulers take the stuff on the same truck as the garbage, but as I said above it all gets dumped into the same hole.
Not only that, the State forced adoption of the law. However, the State (Wisconsin) also permits the landfills to take Illinois garbage, and no attempt is made to separate the recyclables. The word "farce" comes to mind, but someone else already used it!
I told my children ( 8 and 5) that they could not generate any garbage what so ever because they would screw up the legacy for their children.
I'm still pissed off at my Mom and Dad.
LVM
Well, that's a little misleading: when he says 35 miles square, many people think 35 square miles, or not quite 6x6 miles. In fact, he is referring to a square area 35x35 or 1225 square miles. Granted, that is still small relative to the size of the country. But it still seems a little deceptive.
And frankly, I avoid all non-mandatory recycling.
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